Monday, August 07, 2006

Another MSM Blog Bust

This probably isn't news to you, and that's the point. Memeorandum has 19 blogs linked to the Jawa Report post in whcih Rusty Shackelford took apart a Reuters photo purportedly showing an Israeli F16 firing missiles over Lebanon. Technorati links up 22 blogs.

This all follows on a Haaretz post about another doctored Reuters photo, and a Reuters confession:

The Reuters news agency admitted Sunday that it had published a doctored photograph of Beirut after an Israel Air Force strike on Saturday morning.

In the original image, thin smoke can be seen rising over the Lebanese capital, but in the second photograph, thick, black smoke can be seen billowing over the buildings.

Reuters said that it has dropped Adnan Hajj, the Lebanese photographer who submitted the image. The organization also said that it is investigating the incident.And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Reuters is getting it left and right, and Hajj features prominently in many of the doctored and misleading photographs.

The question is: If bloggers can pick apart these photos so easily, what are the Reuters photo editors doing to earn an honest living? The answer is obvious: They're letting the photos pass because they like their drama ... anti-Israeli drama ... too much to question their authenticity.

This is also a story of the successful jihadist battle for the public perception. Unfettered by rules of decency and standards of ethics, the jihadists are freely distorting the news in order to keep the Arab world unified and undercut GWOT support in the West.

Bound as we always are by decency and crippled as we've lately become by political correctness, we are letting them get away with this too much. The co-opted media has only learned one lesson from this: To be more careful in their deceits. They will continue to love the Jihadist News Bureaus of Beirut, Gaza and Baghdad.

"Thank you for the "Voice of the Victims films. The students really liked them, and it means so much to them to hear real stories and not watch a cheesy drama like so many other videos."
— High school teacher.